The Red Book Magazine/Volume 29/Number 5/The Prince of Charmingville

by Meredith Nicholson

 

JUST the sort of reading the doctor would prescribe for this kind of weather: a very lightly told love story,—by the author of “The House of a Thousand Candles,”—in which a fat man is the hero, but not the lover.

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Illustration: The colored elevator-boy whistled piercingly and dropped the car with a bang to the ground floor.

 

The Prince
Of Charmingville

By Meredith Nicholson

ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG

ROGER G. McGILLICUDDY had never traveled with an opera company before. Indeed, he did not immediately realize that the young ladies and gentlemen, thirty in number, who had sleepily jostled him on the Fostoria platform were members of a profession adorned by Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso. He was more concerned with the fact that No. 18 did not carry a parlor-car, though the common carrier to which he had confidingly intrusted his person had, through its officers and agents, promised him that luxury. Being a prosperous merchant, a partner in one of the largest wholesale dry-goods houses in the West, Mr. MeGillicuddy liked to indulge his two hundred and forty-three pounds in all the ease and comforts possible. However, he accepted the situation with characteristic philosophy. He fortified himself with the Cleveland and Cincinnati papers, and having taken the precaution to breakfast before leaving, he was disposed to view the day with serenity.

McGillicuddy had visited Fostoria for the praiseworthy purpose of inspecting a monument he had just reared to the memory of his Buckeye ancestors, and had promised himself the pleasure of spending a day at Kernville, the Gem City of the Wabash, to renew old ties with Jim Watkins, a former employee of his house who was now sole proprietor of the Gem City's leading department-store. Watkins had married a highly successful buyer of notions for the McGillicuddy house, and McGillicuddy had helped Watkins to finance his new venture. Watkins was a shrewd and successful man; his wife was an eminently capable person; and McGillicuddy looked forward with the liveliest pleasure to seeing them in their new home.

Forbes, the manager of the Ideal Opera Company, engaged in the laudable enterprise of presenting “The Prince of Charmingville” over the banana circuit, retired to the smoker to nurse his grouch when the train pulled out. Even the comedian, who had found it possible to minimize the arrears of his salary by promoting sundry small games of cards with Forbes as the predestined and foreordained victim, gloomily surveyed the manager's austere and forbidding back and was convinced of the truth of the persistent evil rumors that the angel who had sent the Ideals wandering through the Ohio Valley in “The Prince of Charmingville” was suffering from an acute attack of cold feet and had ceased his remittances,

ADVENTURE had knocked late at McGillicuddy's door, but the knock had been insistent. Many things had happened to him since he first heard the call—things that do not usually happen to stout gentlemen of forty, who write large checks without appearing self-conscious and follow fluctuations in wool and cotton fabrics with a shrewd and calculating eye.

He was a happier man than he had been in the old days, and he accepted the presence of the Ideals as a mitigating circumstance of the journey to Kernville. The lively conversation about him at once caused his eyes to roam unseeingly over his newspaper. A diffident man, McGillicuddy, he had grown immensely curious of late as to the employments and habits of fragments of the human race that were wholly alien to wholesale dry goods. He had realized that his life was too circumscribed; it lacked variety; and his soul revolted against his treadmill existence—laborious hours in his office, and ample meals eaten at clubs where he met the same men every day.

“Florette, are you there?” a girl's voice demanded. “Where's Florette?”

The Ideals filled the aisle, choosing seats and disposing of suit-cases, and Florette did not disclose herself until the inquirer had announced with resignation her firm belief that Florette had been left behind.

“Well, Myrtle, what's biting you so hard?”

This from Florette, who had not been left behind but had lingered on the platform conversing with a young gentleman who had shown her many flattering attentions during the Fostoria engagement.

All that Myrtle wanted was her pearl-handled nail-file, and when Florette declared that she would not open her suit-case again to please anyone, Myrtle said, “Oh, very well!” and added in an undertone a critical comment of a general nature as to the nerve of some people—some people being presumably Florette—who borrow pearl-handled nail-files and then conceal them in inaccessible suit-cases.

Being a lover of mankind, McGillicuddy was distressed to find that, judging by their acrimonious conversation, these young people apparently hated each other and all the world. Musical comedies were not distasteful to him, and he had assumed that the good cheer of such entertainments is only an expression of the natural effervescence of the players. This clearly was not true of the Ideals, who spent half an hour settling themselves, looking for mislaid candy-boxes and magazines, abusing the railroad schedules, discussing a rumor that “The Red Mill” was to be revived in 1919, and the reported raising of Mary Pickford's salary to seven thousand dollars a month—just think of that, girls!

McGillicuddy, midway of the coach, became absorbed in these revelations. The men of the company had gone promptly to the smoker, and save for two bearded Dunkards on their way to a religious conference, McGillicuddy was the only male in the car.

“Who's your little friend, Irene?”

This inquiry, proceeding from somewhere in the rear of the car, seemed intended for a young person immediately in front of McGillicuddy whose abundant blond hair had already impressed itself upon his attention.

Irene turned her head; a pair of violet eyes swept McGillicuddy carelessly and then sought the impudent inquirer beyond.

“Nothing doing!” she replied.

THE train stopped suddenly, was jerked into motion again—and Irene's hat tumbled out of the rack and lighted on McGillicuddy's knees.

His efforts to restore the hat to the rack afforded entertainment for the entire car. Those in front of him turned to enjoy the spectacle. It was a small, frail trifle of straw, adorned with a single feather, and it seemed absurd that a man of McGillicuddy's size should be baffled in his efforts to dispose of it. He first tried gentle means, but owing to the swaying of the coach and the shortness of McGillicuddy's right arm, these attempts failed dismally. Then he began hopping, clapping the hat against the edge of the rack as he rose, and then catching it in both hands as it fell. Irene had turned around the better to observe the struggle. The other Ideals first giggled and then shrieked delightedly as McGillicuddy's hopping experiments continued.

“As a hopper, De Wolf hasn't anything on that,” remarked one of the company in a languid tone that McGillicuddy found highly irritating. He also was conscious of the presence in Irene's hat of a long pin with a malevolent keen point. It had stabbed him twice, viciously. Efforts to catch the hat without being stuck by the pin added zest to his undertaking. His dignity suffered, and dignity is precious to a man who has failed after heroic efforts to bring his weight under two hundred and forty-three pounds. At the seventh trial the hat hung in the rack for a tantalizing instant, and McGillicuddy, taken off guard, narrowly missed it as it fell again. This time it proved even more elusive than before. It seemed anxious to contribute as much as possible to the prevailing gayety. McGillicuddy resorted to juggling, but the hat rebounded from his hands like a tennis-ball tossed on a racket. Irene now rose and joined in the effort to capture it.

“Oh, don't bother!” she remarked. “I'll put it on my seat.”

“In just a moment!” panted McGillicuddy as he caught her hands with the hat. “Just a moment more!”

“Yale has the ball!” piped some one.

But McGillicuddy had no intention of being thwarted in the performance of a chivalrous act. He owned a half-interest in a millinery-factory and had no great respect for hats as merchandise. He clasped Irene's hat to his bosom with his left hand and clambered upon the seat. Then, with a well-feigned air of nonchalance, he planted the hat safely in the rack and anchored it by driving the pin into the silk cover of his umbrella. He surveyed his fellow-passengers with a benevolent, satisfied smile, took Irene's hand—outstretched solicitously—and by its aid regained his seat without mishap.

The Ideals applauded. McGillicuddy ceased mopping his face to wave his handkerchief—the gentlest, the most decorous flutter of monogrammed linen, not in any manner compromising to a man of McGillicuddy's moral character and commercial rating.

The Ideals were now convinced that McGillicuddy was a good fellow worthy of their comradeship. His fight with Irene's hat had cleared the atmosphere in the stuffy coach and brought them to good humor. A tired-looking girl across the aisle smiled at him as though he were her dearest friend and begged the loan of a newspaper. Irene sat upon one foot that she might turn around and converse with McGillicuddy face to face. Others of the company took occasion to stroll down the aisle for a closer inspection of the amiable gentleman in the gray suit, whose traveling-bag was real seal and who bore other marks of prosperity.

“We play Kernville to-night,” said Irene in a tone that implied that the Ideals were conferring the greatest boon upon the Gem City of the Wabash in condescending to pause there. “We've been out six weeks and are booked till April. Oh no, I don't mind the traveling—but these one night-stands—well, believe me! But it's the only life!”

Illustration: It was not in McGillicuddy's soul to suffer any girl to famish in his presence. He told the train-boy to pass the basket down the aisle and bring the bill to him. When the boy reappeared, the basket had been emptied. McGillicuddy was so pleased with the generous spirit in which the Ideals had availed themselves of his hospitality that he gave the boy a five-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Where McGillicuddy sat became the center of the car. Anyone seeing the Ideals fluttering about him might have thought him an old friend and comrade.

THE nobility of this avowal of devotion to her laborious profession impressed McGillicuddy. Her eyes were receiving his more deliberate attention. They were fine eyes;. he noticed also that Irene's face showed none of the lingering vestiges of the make-up box that he had noted with mild disapproval on the faces of the other girls. Freckles were visible about her nose, and there is something wholesome and reassuring and appealing about freckles. Being a practical business man, he speculated as to the salary-list of the Ideal Company; and as an experienced dry-goods jobber, he appraised her attire as accurately as though he had seen the original invoice. He had met a few distinguished actors in his time, and had once dined with John Drew; but no ladies of the profession had ever illumined his horizon. It was almost unbelievable that he was traveling in this intimate fashion with a musical-comedy company.

A tall young woman who had beguiled the brakeman into turning a seat for her special comfort was sprawled out reading a magazine, quite oblivious of her companions. Irene informed McGillicuddy that this was Miss Ashley, the star of the company. The manner in which Miss Ashley turned her back upon the other Ideals argued for a haughty and disdainful nature. McGillicuddy formed a low estimate of Miss Ashley's manners and attainments from this aloofness and also from the fact that Irene evidently did not wholly admire her.

“Business good?” he asked.

“Rotten!” Irene confessed readily.

“I should think if you could play in larger cities—” McGillicuddy suggested.

“This piece! Well, if you could see the show once, you wouldn't talk about larger cities! We just about get by the tanks—that's all!”

It was evident that in spite of her declaration of loyalty to the profession. Irene was finding the lot of an Ideal not altogether a happy one. Another of the sisterhood now sat upon the arm of McGillicuddy's seat and asked Irene for the love of Mike to lend her a quarter.

“I didn't get a thing for breakfast except a cup of coffee; I'm perishing for a piece of chocolate.”

It was not in McGillicuddy's soul to suffer any girl to famish in his presence. He told the train-boy to pass the basket down the aisle and bring the bill to him. When the boy reappeared, the basket had been emptied. McGillicuddy was so pleased with the generous spirit in which the Ideals had availed themselves of his hospitality that he gave the boy a five-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.

Where McGillicuddy sat became the center of the car. Anyone seeing the Ideals fluttering about him might have thought him an old friend and comrade. His attitude toward them was genially and tolerantly avuncular. No uncle could have been kinder; no nieces could have been more charmingly respectful, more respectfully intimate. He deplored the desert wastes in his life that had never been glorified by Ideals. In an hour's time he learned more of the stage than he had ever known before. He had never met such people; he had never dreamed of their existence!

A little brown-eyed girl with a beguiling short upper lip (she was Annette Booth, and did a dancing specialty, Irene told him) sat down beside him and removed his scarfpin with the avowed intention of enhancing the artistic structure of his tie. She admired the pearl so extravagantly that if he hadn't been restrained by a feeling of delicacy, a fear that it might be presumptuous on his part to offer jewelry to a young lady to whom he had never been formally introduced, he would have asked her to accept it as a keepsake.

Noting and respecting his scruples, Annette thrust the pin into her shirt waist absently and carelessly forgot its existence. McGillicuddy pretended not to notice the transfer. The incident did not, however, escape Irene, who shook her head at Annette. McGillicuddy saw this, but while he thought none the less of Annette for removing the pin in a spirit of girlish playfulness, he liked Irene the more for the shake of her head. In a frame of mind to be pleased with anything an Ideal did, he was already mentally debating just what he could do at Kernville that night to express his interest in the drama as represented by these daughters of Thespis.

When at noon the train paused for refreshments, McGillicuddy paid for the hungry Ideals' raid on the lunch-counter. By this time he was established on terms of the most cordial friendship with Irene. A shrewd judge of character, he was struck increasingly by the number of ways in which she was not like the rest of the Ideals. For one thing, she had manifested a less voracious hunger in the lunch-room, and this spoke for superior breeding. Taken off guard, she seemed a little wistful—not wholly happy in her surroundings. Her name was Mortimer, McGillicuddy learned; Florette's was Follansby.

“Of course they're just stage names,” Florette explained; and McGillicuddy felt that he was breathing the true atmosphere.

Generously encouraging his apparent preference for Irene, Florette spoke of her friend with the utmost friendliness.

“Irene has a very good natural voice, but of course it's never had the proper training. This is her first season. Me? I've been on the stage four years—can you beat it?”

McGillicuddy could not beat it. He expressed his astonishment that one so young could possibly have been in professional life for any such period.

“Irene's only eighteen! To-morrow's her birthday!”

“Really!” exclaimed McGillicuddy.

“She's terribly sensitive,” Florette continued. “But you got to get that out o' your system. A girl like her, who aint naturally fitted for a professional career, and cries when she gets a call-down, had better get married and play the girl with the hoe in her own little garden. Lord! If Forbes talked to me the way he does to Irene, I'd sure retire to private life!”

McGillicuddy hated Forbes for his lack of consideration for Irene. He had observed Forbes at the lunch-counter and had formed the lowest opinion of him. McGillicuddy felt deeply that a man with so many young lives in his keeping should be a gentleman.

LATER in the afternoon Irene sat beside McGillicuddy and became confidential. Her bravado of the morning had passed, and she talked of herself frankly and without affectation.

“My people don't know what I'm doing,” she confessed. “I ran away from home to go on the stage.”

McGillicuddy's face betokened gravity. He did not like the idea of girls' running away from home for any purpose.

“This show can't last much longer, and I don't know where I'm going to land. My home is in Wisconsin, and I sang in the church choir in my home town. My father is rich, for a place like that. Papa and Mamma want me to marry Papa's partner,—a widower with two children!—and they made me very unhappy about it. So I ran away to Chicago and got a place in the Ideal Company. Just between you and me, I'm not very crazy about the stage, and if it weren't for these nice, hard-working people, I'd be glad to see the show close.”

“The—er—man they wanted you to marry didn't appeal to you? Perhaps there is some one else?” McGillicuddy murmured sympathetically.

A tear—a large one—suddenly rolled down Irene's cheek.

“Yes; there is some one else. We're engaged, and as soon as Dick—Richard Varney is his name—gets a place he's waiting for in the bank at home,—it will be only a few months,—we're going to be married.”

“Richard—Mr. Varney is out of employment, is he?” asked McGillicuddy solicitously, running over in his mind possible openings in his own establishment for a young man capable of holding down a bank job.

“Yes; Richard was head bookkeeper for Papa, but after he began paying me attentions and I refused to marry the way they wanted me to, Papa discharged him.”

McGillicuddy, a bachelor, marveled at the hardness of the paternal heart. He was sure that Richard was a nice fellow.

“You hear from Richard, do you?”

“Oh, yes; he has our route-list, and we write regularly.”

“Um!” said McGillicuddy approvingly.

ARRIVING at Kernville, McGillicuddy was accompanied to the Dixon House by all the Ideals that could pack themselves into the bus. When he reached his room, he was still conscious of their presence in other parts of the hotel. One of them had attacked a piano on the parlor floor, and rag-time melodies, with the loud pedal on, rose to him through the elevator-shaft. His room was on the fourth and last floor, midway of the corridor, and across a low intervening roof he read a sign on the wall beyond—James Watkins & Co.—Dry Goons, Shoes and Millinery.

He remembered with satisfaction that he had forgotten to wire Watkins of the exact hour of his approach, and therefore was free to spend the evening as he liked. Moreover, he had already engaged himself to eat six o'clock dinner with Irene and Florette, and it would be difficult to explain to Watkins his engagement elsewhere. He had recalled that Barkley, one of his traveling men, who “made” Kernville, was about due there, and he had added Florette as a chaperon against any possible meeting with his alert salesman, who might carry back to Chicago the strange news that the head of the house was buying suppers for chorus-girls in out-of-the-way places.

Illustration: “I hope Papa wont hurt Dick!” Irene moaned. “Don't worry about Dick!” McGillicuddy admonished. “We'll take care of that later.” He bade her flatten herself against the wall, and he addressed himself to the business of inserting the pipe through a crack in an iron shutter of the dry-goods store. It opened far more easily than he had expected, and he made mental note that he must caution Watkins against such carelessness.

McGillicuddy convoyed Irene and Florette to the stage-door of the Grand Opera House and promised them supper after the performance.

Seventy-five citizens of Kernville had seen and heard one act of “The Prince of Charmingville,” without any visible exhibition of pleasurable emotion, when Roger G. McGillicuddy found himself an object of attention.

The sheriff of the county, armed with a writ of attachment, had found Forbes in the box-office watching the count-up. Forbes, having had previous experience of the law and being a resourceful person, assured the sheriff that the manager was inside and that it would be sheer folly to attach the box-office receipts when the Ideal Company was perfectly solvent. The sheriff permitted himself to be led to the box where McGillicuddy sat in solitary state, and made known his business.

McGillicuddy was surprised but in no wise disconcerted. He followed the sheriff to the box-office, from which Forbes had already departed with the company's share of the receipts—indeed, he had even now caught an interurban car for Indianapolis and all points south, leaving the company to whistle for two weeks' salary.

“I've got to have three hundred dollars cash, or I'll hold the company's traps,” declared the sheriff.

The lawyer who had precipitated the crisis in the affairs of the Ideals now appeared and berated the house-manager for conniving at Forbes' flight. The sheriff threatened him with dire consequences if he ever played such a trick upon him again. McGillicuddy's tender heart was struck with fear for the Ideals. Unless three hundred dollars was immediately forthcoming, they would be out of business. He took the attorney's receipt for the claims in full and regained his box in the middle of the second act just in time to hear Irene speak her only line—and it was a stupid one.

Modest as were his claims to recognition as a dramatic critic, McGillicuddy knew that “The Prince of Charmingville” was a poor show. The Ideals worked hard; he was impressed by their zeal and industry; but the harder they worked, the sadder book and music became. McGillicuddy was a practical man, and he watched the piece proceed with the melancholy knowledge that the Ideals would never get beyond Kernville.

He returned to the hotel to await the coming of Irene and Florette, for whom he ordered the best supper the Dixon House offered. Members of the company, hurrying back from the theater, execrated the faithless Forbes and discussed in bitter terms their unpaid salaries and the future that hung darkly before them.

They eyed McGillicuddy hopefully. A young man who explained that he was the stage-manager offered to assume the burden of moving the company to Terryville, its next stop; all he asked was the carfare. There was a county fair in progress in Terryville, and they couldn't help doing business. McGillicuddy was pleased by the young man's deference and agreed to supply the necessary funds.

Irene and Florette poured out their gratitude at the supper-table. Florette had been stranded frequently, and she accepted such experiences with cynical resignation.

“You're the good sport, all right!” Florette declared. “We all know what you did, and you can bet we're strong for you!”

McGillicuddy, whose usual retiring hour was ten, broke up his party at twelve-thirty. In the most delicate manner possible he begged Irene and Florette not to trouble about their hotel bills when they left the next morning, as he craved the privilege of adjusting them.

Irene wept at this; Florette rapturously flung her arms about his neck and kissed him. This incident occurred at the door of the room the girls had taken together and was observed by the colored elevator-boy, who whistled piercingly and dropped the car with a bang to the ground floor.

McGillicuddy sought the privacy of his own room and surveyed himself in the mirror. It had been a long time since he had been kissed by anyone but his sister and her children, and he was not sure but that Florette had carried her gratitude to a dangerous extreme; but the experience was, on the whole, agreeable and satisfying.

HE was unfastening his tie, recalling, without bitterness, that the impulsive Annette had not returned his pin, when the telephone tinkled.

“This is the sheriff,” said a voice he recognized; “are you the manager of the Ideal Opera Company I settled with awhile ago?”

McGillicuddy hesitated. In paying three hundred dollars to get rid of the writ of attachment, he had beyond doubt laid himself open to the grave suspicion of being the responsible head of the Ideals. As the members of the ill-fated company might again need his assistance, it seemed cowardly to dodge responsibility now.

“Yes,” he answered, after the sheriff had repeated his question.

“Well, you wait right there till I get over to the hotel. I got a writ o' habeas corpus to serve on you!”

“What?” demanded McGillicuddy faintly.

“The father o' one o' the girls in your company is here with a lawyer,—yes, here at the jail,—making out the papers. You stay right there—understand? I'm sending a deputy over to watch you. Don't try to put anything over on me!”

McGillicuddy doddered. Sheriffs had never entered into his scheme of life. The thing had an ugly sound. He was not anxious to be haled into court for unlawfully withholding a young woman from her parents. As he cogitated, he was aroused by a quick rap on the door, and his name was called tearfully.

“It's Irene!” sobbed a voice.

McGillicuddy opened the door guardedly for a discreet parley, but Irene, wrapped in a bath-wrapper, pushed her way into the room and sank, sobbing breathlessly, into a chair.

“This will never do, Miss Mortimer—it wont do at all!” he said sternly.

“I just had a note from Dick. Dick's here! He's just come and is here in this hotel! He's waiting for me in the parlor—I just talked to him on the telephone; and he says Papa has followed him here and is going to have me arrested and take me ho-um!”

“Of course, as you're not of age, your father probably has every right to do so, Miss Mortimer. But the situation is unfortunate—deplorable!”

It was clear to Roger G. McGillicuddy that the time had come for him to extricate himself from the multiplying difficulties attendant upon the angeling of an opera company. Yet it seemed that every consideration of chivalry and honor demanded that he should, at any personal sacrifice, stand by Irene at this crisis in her life.

“You're sure Richard is in town?” he asked, stepping briskly to the window and surveying the fire-escape.

“He's waiting; he wants me to marry him before Papa can get me; but I'm afraid to go downstairs for fear Papa will see me! He's got a lawyer, and Dick says he's ter-ri-bly an-gry!”

“Are you satisfied that you really love this young man?” McGillicuddy asked as Irene rose and seized his hands. Even with her hair tousled and her eyes brimming, Irene indisputably was a very pretty girl.

“I never loved anyone else! I can't live without him!”

“Stop crying; that's a good little girl! What's your father's name?”

“Arthur J. Barnes, of Barnes & Collins, Fond du Lac.”

“No!” McGillicuddy blurted. “I've sold your father goods for twenty years! And he wants you to marry old Sam Collins!”

“Y-e-s; and Mr. Collins has two c-h-i-1-d-e-r-e-n!” sobbed Irene.

“It's outrageous! You are quite right in refusing. I'll not allow it!” declared McGillicuddy with great firmness.

Once more the telephone jingled. Simultaneously there rose sounds of a furious pounding in the direction of Irene's room. A man's voice was demanding the immediate opening of the door.

“It's Papa!” moaned Irene.

Florette's screams, as the attack upon her door continued, rang out shrilly. The whole floor was aroused, and alarmed guests were flocking into the hall.

“Florette sent me in here and promised she wouldn't open the door, and they think I'm in there,” said Irene.

It was very much in McGillicuddy's mind that his room was no place for Irene. He must get her out of it as expeditiously as possible. A sharp knock on the door sent him on tiptoe to the window, dragging Irene after him.

“We'll see what we can do, little girl!” he whispered. “Get out of the window and climb down the fire-escape and wait for me.”

IRENE ceased crying when she saw that McGillicuddy meant to help her, and she climbed out on the ladder with alacrity. The attack on his door had been abandoned, and his visitors were renewing their attention to the portal behind which Florette continued to scream dismally.

“I'll unlock my door,” said McGillicuddy daringly, 'and they'll think I went out that way.”

Irene's head had already disappeared, and McGillicuddy, not without difficulty, clambered out, drew down his window carefully and began his descent into the unknown. The ladder shook under his weight as he slowly made his way downward. There was an unfortunate hiatus between the lowest round and the roof of the adjoining building, and after kicking the air wildly in search for a footing, he pitched forward, scraping a considerable area of gravel roof with his hands.

“I hope you're not hurt!” cried Irene, assisting him to rise.

“Not at all!” panted McGillicuddy.

The zest of adventure was upon him, and he grasped Irene's cold hand and dragged her across the roof toward the Watkins establishment, the two upper stories of which loomed dimly above them. He stumbled upon something that proved to be a short piece of gas-pipe, and fortified with this, he continued his flight. In the street below, an automobile approached at high speed and stopped with a discordant squeaking of brakes in front of the hotel.

“The sheriff!” McGillicuddy muttered.

“I hope Papa wont hurt Dick!” Irene moaned. “Dick hasn't done anything!”

“Don't worry about Dick!” McGillicuddy admonished. “We'll take care of that later.”

He bade her flatten herself against the wall, and he addressed himself to the business of inserting the pipe through a crack in an iron shutter of the dry-goods store. It opened far more easily than he had expected, and he made mental note that he must caution Watkins against such carelessness. To his gratification, the catch of the window within had not been fastened. He raised the sash cautiously and thrust his head in. It was within the range of possibilities that there might be a watchman to reckon with, but now that he was committed to the adventure, the idea of encountering a watchman was not appalling. He stood erect inside and moving away from the window, struck a match. Its light fell first upon a strange apparition whose presence, slowly disclosed as the match flared, gave him a bad moment. But it proved to be nothing more hostile than a manikin dressed in a new fall suit.

He returned to the window and drew Irene in after him. This done, he closed the shutter and lowered the window. Groping about by the light of matches, he found a bracket and turned on a light.

“I guess we're all right for a minute,” he said, mopping his face.

HE was alone at one o'clock in the morning in a dry-goods store, in the company of a young woman whose necessities in the way of raiment were immediate. If he carried through his now definitely formed program, Irene must be appareled in something more becoming than a bath-wrapper; and nothing could have been luckier than this choice of Watkins' store as a refuge. The shutter screened the ready-to-wear department from the eyes of sheriffs and other hateful persons. And McGillicuddy reckoned that the sheriff, having already seen him, could hardly have failed to observe his proportions and was therefore unlikely to consider fire-escapes as a medium by which a gentleman of McGillicuddy's weight would seek safety.

McGillicuddy had never been more calm; neither had he ever suffered more from heat. The air in the closed store was oppressive, and his melted collar clung to his neck with disagreeable tenacity.

“Irene,” he began, “—but Irene isn't really your name?”

“Mabel,” said Irene. Mabel, he reflected, was a much more appropriate name than Irene for a girl with a sprinkling of freckles around her nose.

“Mabel, will you—er—look through the stock here and find some clothing. I suggest a gown suitable for traveling. We are burglars,” he continued, smiling at her pleased surprise. “We are burglars, and yet we are hardly that, either, as I know the proprietor very well and will reimburse him for his losses in the morning. As I recall the arrangement of the building, the office is on the first floor, and I'm going down there to use the telephone.”

Leaving Mabel busily engaged in inspecting fall suits, McGillicuddy gained the first floor, where, at the rear, he found Watkins' private office. He turned on a light over the proprietor's desk and putting on his glasses, found Watkins' residence duly registered in the telephone-book. After a long delay a male voice snarled at him sleepily.

“That you, Jim?” asked McGillicuddy.

The announcement that Roger G. McGillicuddy was in town took the sleep out of Watkins' voice immediately.

“Good Lord! Come right up to the house!” came over the wire in hospitable accents.

“Is Mrs. Watkins at home?” inquired McGillicuddy.

“Yes; we were expecting you, and your room's all ready,” replied Watkins. “Where are you—at the station or the Dixon House?”

“I'm at the store,” McGillicuddy replied. “Be careful—be very careful—I want to tell you something, Jim.”

Watkins seemed to have lost confidence in his sense of hearing. A full minute was expended by McGillicuddy in assuring his friend that he was indeed in Watkins' dry-goods store on Main Street.

“Keep still, Jim; I'm in a hurry!”

McGillicuddy heard Watkins yell to his wife to be quiet—that the store was not on fire.

“Listen to me, Jim. I'm in your office, talking from your desk. Do you get that? There's a young lady here—on the ready-to-wear floor Yes,—don't be silly!—a young lady! Her father's chasing her, and I helped her get out of the hotel. I got mixed up with an opera company Yes, an opera company; and they thought I was boss of the thing, and they're out looking for me with legal papers. Yes, the sheriff's looking for me! It's habeas corpus—do you get that?”

Watkins' repetition of the words “sheriff” and “habeas corpus” evoked a shriek from Mrs. Watkins that was plainly audible to McGillicuddy. Time was lost while the perturbed lady was again quieted.

“I want your wife to take charge of the girl until she can be married. What's that? No! No! I'm not going to marry her! There's a young fellow at the hotel that's ready to marry her. What? Of course I stand for it! Yes; of course I'm all right! Get your machine out; come in the back way so they wont see you from the hotel, and I'll be ready to go up to your house with the girl. Fifteen minutes! Well, make it ten, Jim!

Illustration: McGillicuddy felt that he owed the man an explanation if not an apology. But the darky was in no humor for conversation. His chief purpose in life seemed to be to escape from the presence of the stout burglar who had had invaded the sacred precincts of the Watkins emporium.

McGILLICUDDY turned off the light, opened the window by the desk, loosened the shutter and peered through the crack. Apparently the hotel was in a state of panic. Lights shone in all the windows, and men and women in night dress were bending out, watching the result of the search. A man bearing a lantern ran through the alley, shouting to some one in the street. The view from the window was worthy of longer contemplation than McGillicuddy had time to bestow upon it. Two girls. undoubtedly Ideals, in their enjoyment of the excitement, were lifting their voices melodiously in an air from “The Prince of Charmingville.”

McGillicuddy fastened the shutter and struck a match. As he turned around, he became aware of a face thrust through the door of the private office—the face of a negro with the whites of his eyes showing grotesquely. McGillicuddy, taken off guard, wavered. As he toppled unsteadily, he was even more startled by a shriek that broke from this unlooked-for visitor, who turned and ran away with a lively patter of feet. A moment later the lights flashed upon tables on which millinery was displayed, and at the farther end of the room McGillicuddy saw a half-clad negro staring at him with wide-open mouth and rolling eyes.

McGillicuddy began advancing toward him with the dignity enforced upon a gentleman of his weight.

“Listen to me, my man,” he began ingratiatingly. “If you're the watchman here—”

McGillicuddy, smiling benevolently, advanced toward the terror-stricken man, talking to him cooingly like a stranger trying to establish friendly relations with a flirtatious terrier. He had no intention of being thwarted by a nervous watchman who, if he escaped, would undoubtedly summon the police and spoil McGillicuddy's further plans. Still, he felt that he owed the man an explanation if not an apology.

But the darky was in no humor for conversation. His chief purpose in life seemed to be to escape from the presence of the stout burglar who had invaded the sacred precincts of the Watkins emporium. It was clear that he distrusted McGillicuddy's intentions. He continued to back away as McGillicuddy approached, and finding that the distance lessened steadily, he turned suddenly and dashed down the room. In unsuccessfully hurdling a chair, he fell with a crash—but continued his flight and finding only a solid wall ahead, plunged into a closet and buried himself from sight.

McGillicuddy threw himself against the door and drove it shut with a bang that echoed hollowly through the building. After spending several minutes in vain efforts to engage the prisoner in conversation, McGillicuddy regretfully turned the key. He was pained by the thought of leaving a conscientious and trusted employee locked in a dark closet, but as the door did not fit snugly, it was unlikely that the man would smother before some one turned up to release him.

TURNING off the lights, McGillicuddy ascended to the suits-department and found Mabel fully attired. She had even rearranged her hair, and he found her a most presentable Mabel indeed. The opportunity to choose from the entire stock of the store had not tempted the discerning and critical Mabel. Knowing that in her father's store the manikins were outfitted with the most desirable garments, she had stripped a dummy of its tasteful adornments and appropriated the clothes to her own use. She had entirely recovered her self-possession and smiled hopefully as she saw that McGillicuddy had not weakened in his determination to protect her.

“Here's a hat I picked up—I thought you would like the blue feather,” McGillicuddy remarked, extending a pretty millinery trifle.

Mabel clapped on the hat and eyed herself with undisguised satisfaction in a mirror. “What was that noise I heard downstairs?” she asked.

“I met the watchman,” McGillicuddy answered, “and the poor fellow seemed to be greatly alarmed, but he wont trouble us further.”

“I was afraid you might be hurt; I should feel dreadful if anything happened to you!” said Mabel.

“You needn't be at all troubled,” said McGillicuddy, endeavoring to control his accelerated breathing. “I never felt better in my life!”

His palms still stung from his slide on the gravel roof, and he was sensible of bruises on his legs, the result of bumps against the millinery tables.

When they reached the stairs on their way to the ground floor, the imprisoned negro could be heard kicking the door with a rhythmical staccato possible only to a man who is lying on his back and using both feet.

“The room is rather small,” McGillicuddy remarked in reply to Mabel's frightened whisper, “but I think the lock will hold.”

As they reached the rear door, an automobile drew up in haste.

“You must trust me implicitly; it's a friend of mine who will take good care of you,” he said as he opened the door.

“McGillicuddy?” anxiously questioned a man who stood beside the machine.

“Good morning, Jim!” said the adventurer composedly. “Let 'er out for your house as fast as you can. We have no time to waste!”

Without parley Watkins slammed the big doors shut. McGillicuddy helped Mabel into the back seat and sat down beside Watkins. As the car leaped forward, a man shouted from the rear of the hotel and was quickly joined by others who sprang into view in the dim light of the alley. McGillicuddy turned as the car crossed the next street and saw a crowd gathering.

“Run around a bit to throw 'em off,” he suggested.

The cool air was grateful to him after the dead air of the store. He experienced a sense of exhilaration he had rarely known before, as he explained to Watkins his further plans.

“It's better that I shouldn't be too conspicuous in this matter, Jim. Run to your house, and then I'll ask you to wake up the county clerk and get a marriage-license and a minister.”

Watkins listened in silence, save for an occasional chuckle.

“The sheriff is a friend of mine,” he remarked. “I hope he wont have to lock me up!”

Mrs. Watkins received them with as much serenity as could be expected in view of the fact that McGillicuddy had been for many years her synonym of all that is sober, tranquil and becoming in a man of unassailable moral character.

It was with a distinct shock that she saw McGillicuddy, always meticulous in the care of his person, with a black smudge across his perspiring face and a collar that bore a striking resemblance to a dishrag, to say nothing of a dangling pocket where his coat had caught the end of a counter in his gallop through the fall millinery.

“Sorry to bother you with all this,” he apologized, “but I couldn't turn my back on a girl like Mabel!”

WATKINS roused the county clerk by telephone, found that that official kept blank marriage-licenses at home against just such unforeseeable demands and hurried away to his house. Mrs. Watkins summoned a minister from around the corner, and Mabel called the hotel to apprise her startled lover of her whereabouts and enjoin him to the exercise of every precaution in hurrying to the Watkins house.

“He says there's a terrible fuss at the hotel!” she exclaimed as she turned away from the telephone. “They think I've run away with you.”

McGillicuddy blinked as she beamed upon him.

“I merely left the hotel to spend the night with an old friend,” he said blandly. “I suppose I should have informed the clerk I was going out for the night.”

He retired to remove the dirt from his face and clothes and reappeared just as Watkins returned with the license and the minister. The bridegroom arrived a moment later, quite breathless from a lively sprint to throw off a sheriff's deputy who had followed him.

As soon as the young man had been detached from Mabel's arms, McGillicuddy took him aside and subjected him to pointed questioning. Young Varney was a very nice chap, McGillicuddy decided—a straightforward. manly fellow who undoubtedly was very much in love with Mabel.

“I don't like marrying Mabel this way; I'd hoped Mr. Barnes would feel better about me in time,” he said in a tone that pleased McGillicuddy. “Of course I haven't any money, and Mr. Collins is well off. But I'm going to do the best I can.”

“You can't do more than that, my boy,” said McGillicuddy, resting his hand approvingly on Richard's shoulder; and something very like a tear brightened in his eye. He drew out a roll of bills and thrust them upon the young man.

“When you've got through honeymooning, come to Chicago and I'll talk to you about your future.”

The dawn was just breaking as Mabel and Richard stood up before the minister in the Watkins parlor. Mrs. Watkins wept a little as the vows were spoken; Watkins had never so greatly admired McGillicuddy as when that gentleman stepped forward with great dignity to give the bride away.

“How pretty your suit is!” said Mrs. Watkins as they sat down to a five o'clock breakfast. “That's the very newest model!”

“It ought to be nice,” Mabel laughed happily, “for I picked the best in Mr. Watkins' store!”

“And for the same,” said McGillicuddy, dropping a second lump of sugar into his coffee, 'you may send the bill to me.”

THE newly wedded couple could not leave town until nine o'clock, Watkins informed them.

“And before you go,” said McGillicuddy, “I want you to see your father. I want you to send your machine down to the hotel for him, Jim.”

Mabel cried in alarm at the suggestion, and Richard visibly paled.

“It's only square,” said McGillicuddy with decision. “I want you young people to start things right.”

When Barnes arrived, McGillicuddy met him alone in the parlor. He was a lean, nervous man and bore all the marks of having spent a bad night.

“Well!” he snapped as he accepted McGillicuddy's hand reluctantly. “So it is you, is it! If they hadn't described you as a fat old fool, I wouldn't have believed it! And I want to know right now what you mean by kidnaping my daughter! That girl—”

“Mabel is a daughter to be proud of,” McGillicuddy interrupted calmly. “What I did for her I'd be glad to have anyone do for a girl of mine if I were lucky enough to have a daughter like Mabel and fool enough to try to marry her to an old imbecile like—”

“So you confess, do you! I wouldn't have believed it of you! I'm going to make you pay for this—you double-faced scoundrel!”

“Be sensible, Barnes,” McGillicuddy replied softly.

“You—you—chasing around with a lot of cheap actors and hiding a decent girl from her father!”

“Is there anything wrong with young Varney—isn't he a perfectly decent young fellow?”

“Decent! He's decent enough, but the young whippersnapper hasn't a cent in the world—not even a job! And if I've got any influence in my town, he'll never get one!”

“That,” said McGillicuddy quietly, “doesn't really matter. Two weeks from to-day he's coming to Chicago to work for me, and I'm going to see to it that he gets ahead.”

“I'll never give my consent—never!” Barnes declared, striking his hands together. “Where is that girl? You've meddled enough in my business. I want my daughter—I want—”

McGillicuddy rose and walked slowly to the dining-room door.

“Your consent isn't necessary, Barnes. Mrs. Varney, come in and shake hands with your father!”

THE thing that troubled McGillicuddy was his neglect of the watchman he had locked in the cloak-room. The negro hadn't been released until the clerks arrived at eight o'clock, but McGillicuddy eased his conscience somewhat by the gift of a ten-dollar bill.

Watkins undertook to quiet the sheriff, the hotel people and his curious employees, who had been appalled by the disorder that reigned in the millinery and suits departments. And being the heaviest advertiser in Kernville, he also used his influence successfully in quieting the newspapers.

McGillicuddy's luggage having been transferred from the hotel to the Watkins residence, its owner attired himself in fresh garments. The Ideals, who were leaving town (at McGillicuddy's expense) on the train that was to bear the Varneys away, greeted him with noisy acclamations as he appeared at the station with Mabel and her husband. Mrs. Watkins and Barnes, who had abandoned his rôle of the heavy father and become a human being, were also on hand.

Florette marshaled the chorus of “The Prince of Charmingville,” and they formed a circle and danced gayly about McGillicuddy. As the train pulled out, Mabel and her Richard stood upon the platform waving their hands, and the Ideals thrust their heads out of the car windows and sang “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.”

“Look here, Mac,” said Barnes, whose face still tingled from Mabel's last happy kiss, “I've known you a long time, but I never knew you were an old sport, running around with opera companies.”

“At our time of life,” said McGillicuddy, restoring his handkerchief to his pocket after a last salute to the vanishing train, “we've got to loosen up a little!”

More of Meredith Nicholson's inimitable short stories are coming. In an early issue you may expect one with just a dash of the great American game of politics.